1. Technical Field
The invention relates to operator display instrumentation for vehicular speed control. In particular, the invention relates to planned arrival time adjustment based on anticipated arrival time from the current vehicle position. The invention includes an operator display for an adjusted machine operation for an optimized metric, which may be used concurrently with an automatic adjusting machine intervention controls system.
2. Background Information
Operator control of vehicles, such as off-highway large dump trucks in mining operations, may require arrival at a certain location at a certain time to prevent loss of efficiency for a multiple machines scheduled plan. As in a mining application example, a loading equipment tool, such as an electric power wire rope shovel, will lose efficiency of operation when waiting for the arrival of a haul truck.
Continuing with the mining application example, a solution for minimizing shovel waiting time is assignment of multiple haul trucks for hauling the material mined by the shovel, which in turn results in a waiting line queue of haul trucks waiting for their sequenced opportunity for the loading location where the shovel may load the respective haul truck. As a result, the haul trucks waiting in the queue may have missed some increased gains in efficiencies because of their operation in a manner using maximum power to achieve the lowest return trip time, when a more optimum mode of operation in the complete haul cycle might have been utilized.
Another deficiency which may result is the time spent in the waiting queue which causes machine components to have larger temperature hysteresis, such as found in the engine exhaust piping system, engine coolant system, hydraulics system, engine exhaust catalyst fluids system, etc. The highest temperatures are generally reached at maximum power settings and the lowest temperatures are generally reached while simply idling in the waiting queue. While waiting in the queue, the resulting lower temperatures reached may be sufficient to cause inadequate performance or lower performance for operator cabin heat generation or for catalyst exhaust system operations and perhaps cause a need for additional power consumption to increase these temperatures to an adequate level while waiting in queue.
Another deficiency is where limited overall space may exist to accommodate the waiting queue of trucks, which in turn causes congestion and low space clearance passage between trucks. Reduced passage spaces may cause a higher likelihood for collision damage and machine wear and tear through confined area movement mode of operations. This limited space problem may be reduced if the number of waiting trucks is reduced.
The shortcomings of the prior art are addressed by the present invention through a method and system for speed and/or engine control to adjust an estimated time of arrival.